Chapter 100 : One Hundred Days

Chapter 100 : One Hundred Days
San POV 

One hundred days since the anchors fell. 

I find myself counting them subconsciously. Old habit from the Ancient Court, where counting days until we'd see each other was a survival mechanism. Now I count the days of peace. Days without war. Days where the worst injury I suffer is blistered hands from shovels rather than gashes from Void creatures.

One hundred days. It seems both like forever and no time at all.

The watchtower is nearly finished. Walls are high and solid, standing on the foundations I helped excavate with my own hands. Next week, we raise the roof. Then comes the interior work—stairs and platforms and the observation deck that will let sentries see for miles in all directions.

Thornton finds me standing at the base of the structure, staring upwards.

“Admiring your work?” 

“Trying to believe it’s real.” I trace the stone—cool and gritty and permanent. “Everything during the war was temporary. Defensive positions we’d have to abandon the next day. Plans that changed by the hour. Nothing lasted. But this…” I press my palm flat against the wall. “This will be here for decades. Centuries maybe.” 

“That’s the point of building.” Thornton joins me, his own hand on the stone. “Creating things that last after we’re gone. Leaving something behind that means something.” 

“The war left things behind, too. Graves. Trauma. Orphans.” 

“Yes. And watchtowers that will protect those orphans. Healers who tend to the traumatized. Memorials where we honor the graves.” He glances at me sideways. “You’re not just building a tower, boy. You’re building a future. Every stone you lay is a promise that the sacrifices weren’t in vain.”

A promise. I like that better than redemption. Promises can be kept. Redemption seems impossible. 

Later that evening, we have dinner as a family. It’s a tradition we built over these last hundred days—every night, come hell or high water, we sit and eat together. No war councils. No tactical briefings. Just food and conversation and the slow, painstaking process of remembering how to be a family.

“One hundred days,” Papa Luca remarks. He’s walking better now—cane more precaution than necessity. The burns have healed to scars he wears like medals. “Seems like a milestone worth marking.” 

“What kind of marking?” Nadya asks. 

“I don’t know. Something. A celebration. An acknowledgment.” He scans the table. “We survived. All of us. When the odds were such that we shouldn’t have. That deserves to be recognized.” 

“The pack already celebrated,” I remind him. “After the anchors fell. The victory feast.” 

“That was for the pack. This would be for us. For family.” Mama’s hand finds Papa Luca’s across the table. “We’ve spent so long being alphas and leaders and symbols and what the pack needed us to be. Maybe we deserve one night of just being…us.”

Just us. Feels like a strange concept. During the war, there was no “just us”—every moment was public and political and strategic. Even our grief was performative for pack morale.

“What would that look like?” Nadya asks. “A night of just us?” 

“Stories,” Papa Rafe suggests. “Real stories. Not the war stories—we know those already. Stories from before. How your mother and I met. What Luca was like as a young alpha. Embarrassing things we’ve never told you because we never had the time.”

“You have embarrassing stories about Papa Luca?” I try to hide my interest.

“So many.” Papa Rafe grins. “Did you know he once got his head stuck in a ceremonial helmet? Took three betas and a blacksmith to get it off.”

“That’s not—" Papa Luca sputters. "That's completely exaggerated—" 

“I have witnesses.” 

"Witnesses who lie." 

Nadya and I look at each other. Through the bond, we both reach the same conclusion: we don’t actually know these people. Not really. We know them as alphas and warriors and parents shaped by the war. But the people they were before? The stories that made them? Those are strangers. 

"I want to hear," I say. "All of it. Everything we missed." 

So we hear. 

Papa Rafe tells us the story of the first time he saw Mama. How she walked into the great hall with fire in her eyes and he thought, "That one is going to change everything." He was right, though not in the way he expected.

Mama tells us the story of finding out she was pregnant with me. The fear. The joy. The way she talked to her belly for hours, making promises she wasn’t sure she could keep.

Papa Luca tells us the story of the first time he held me in his arms. How I grabbed his finger and wouldn’t let go. How he swore in that moment to protect me from everything—and how that promise felt like both blessing and curse when the prophecy was revealed.

Story upon story. Tears and laughter mingling freely. A hundred small moments we never knew existed, painting a fuller picture of the family we might have been if war hadn’t stolen everything.

By midnight, we’re exhausted. Not from trauma or battle—from feeling. From the emotional catharsis of connection we’ve been too busy surviving to experience.

“One hundred days,” Nadya murmurs sleepily. “One hundred more?” 

“One hundred more.” Mama promises. “And a hundred after that. As many hundreds as we get.” 

I rest against Papa Rafe’s shoulder like I used to when I was small—before the Ancient Court, before weapons, before any of it. He drapes an arm around my shoulders without hesitation.

“We made it,” I whisper. 

“We made it.” He agrees. “And we’ll keep making it. Day by day. Story by story. Together.” 

Together. 

One hundred days in the rearview. 

A lifetime of days ahead. 

And for the first time, that lifetime feels like a gift instead of a burden.

Later, when the house has settled and everyone else has fallen asleep, I find myself at the window. The moon is full and bright over the territory—the same moon that watched us fight and bleed and nearly die. Now it watches over us as we heal.

Nadya materializes beside me, drawn by my wakefulness through our bond.

“Can’t sleep?” 

“Don’t want to. Not yet.” I look at her. My sister. My partner. My other half through everything. “I want to remember this feeling. This exact moment. So when the hard days come—and they will—I can hold onto it.”

“What feeling?” 

“Hope.” I say. “Real hope. Not the desperate kind we clung to during the war. The quiet kind. The kind that believes tomorrow might be good just because today was.”

She takes my hand. Says nothing. Doesn’t need to. 

We stand together, watching moonlight paint silver promises across the days ahead.

One hundred days. 

Just the beginning.